


Save Me (a.k.a. Curses, Foiled Again!)

by josephina_x



Category: Smallville
Genre: Alien Clark, Gen, Mental Disintegration, Mental Instability, Miscommunication, President Lex, Sleep Deprivation, rated for language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 11:13:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/810944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aw, it’s ok, Clark – Lex will be <i>happy</i> to save you!  *evil laughter*</p>
            </blockquote>





	Save Me (a.k.a. Curses, Foiled Again!)

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Save Me (a.k.a. Curses, Foiled Again!)  
> Author: [josephina_x](http://josephina-x.livejournal.com)  
> Fandom: Smallville  
> Pairing: Clark, Lex  
> Rating: R (for language)  
> Spoilers: for the entire series, post seven-year jump  
> Word count: 4100+  
> Summary: Aw, it’s ok, Clark – Lex will be _happy_ to save you! *evil laughter*  
>  Warnings: Un-beta'd.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.  
> Comments: Yes, please! :)  
> Author's Note: Y'know what? I don't think this one was actually going anywhere else, and I wrote it in September 2011 or so, so I'll just g'wan and post this one up here, too ;)

~*~*~*~*~*~

‘Somebody save me!’ Clark thought, tugging at his tie and wishing that whoever had come up with the idea for a tuxedo ended up shot and buried in an unmarked grave. ...No, make that a marked grave – he’d like to know where to go to stomp the earth a little.

The darned thing was just too tight on him in all the wrong places. He had to wear his stupid Superman suit under it, being “undercover” that night as Clark Kent, Intrepid Reporter for the Daily Planet, and on League “bomb duty” for the Presidential gala. A Kryptonian would think that the security at the White House would be more than sufficient to prevent a hero-scale crisis from developing, but noooo -- when something involved a Luthor, conventional wisdom, social niceties, and normal circumstances went right out the window. Especially when the Luthor was a Lex. Stupid Lex.

Not that Lex was stupid. If he was, things would be a whole lot easier all around. Instead, he was a smartass. And also smart. (Clark found that the one tended to go with the other, even if Superman didn’t always concur -- clever and/or witty repartee in the face of danger was not Superman’s thing, but Clark always marveled at anyone with the ability.) However, because said Luthor-of-the-Lex-variety was absolutely dead-set on being a really good evil arch-nemesis of his, this meant that Clark’s life tended to be difficult, in diabolically creative soul-sucking ways.

Such as certain galas being populated with what seemed to be an endless supply of people whose sole purpose in life was apparently to make sure that said Mild-Mannered Intrepid Reporter was perpetually two seconds away from going off to find a nice dark corner and shoot himself in the head. With something possibly permanently damaging, even.

Some days he really, really, really... wanted to... hate Lex. And boy, he put a lot of effort into trying _really_ hard not to get past that “want” stage, because if he _actually_ hated Lex, he’d eventually wake up one morning finding himself having sleep-super-sped or flown or whatever to wherever Lex was and having broken the man's neck in the middle of the night, or something.

It was times like this he wished he had a moon base. It wasn’t the same, having to share one with the League that wasn’t just his, and his alone. How could he be properly homicidal-yet-contained if somebody he knew, who might yet still claim a passing acquaintance with sanity on alternate Wednesdays, could just ‘port up there at any moment and see him yelling at the consoles full of blinky lights about the green donuts Lex had put out _everywhere_ at the Daily Planet office on St. Patrick’s Day last month?

Really, it was totally unfair.

Also, those cream puffs were beginning to look more and more like projectiles by the microsecond.

He needed a better arch-nemesis. Or a worse one. He really, really did.

And possibly some sleep.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Kal was not twitching, Lex noted.

It was more like an absence of a twitch that should be there.

It was highly unnerving.

And this was coming from a man who was surrounded by highly-trained meta-human takedown-capable Secret Service agents, wearing a personal force-field and teleportation device, and packing a matching set of .45mm semi-automatic handguns with seven rounds of triple-distilled Kryptonite-tipped bullets, each, who had seven years experience taking on Superman, and ten years prior experience taking on his younger, somewhat less manageable self.

He’d thought he must have made an error in his calculations. Certainly, there had been multiple times during the last month where his surveillance had been incomplete and he’d lost Kal’s location for several hours.

But one good look at him across the room and he _knew_ that Kal hadn’t slept in well over a week. Maybe two. He was literally guessing at this point, because he didn’t have data on this, and he _hated_ not knowing things. Most days, it was all that kept him alive.

His original calculations had been right, and he was in trouble.

He didn’t like thinking about that week, the original week that had gotten him that data, because Kal had been completely predictable, as usual, right up until a point… and then…

Kal had started acting a little… randomly. Walls started to erode. His “identities” managed… less-than-successfully.

And with almost no warning, Lex had found himself in possession of three rather large holes in the ground where factories had used to be, and upwards of three billion in damages, as it turned out that all of them had in fact, after one traced the money back up through shadow companies and third-party subsidiaries, belonged to him. Two of them had been remote facilities in the middle of nowhere.

One of them had been in Metropolis, and if that building hadn’t been built on the outskirts of the city, and those twelve blocks of housing hadn’t been condemned and long since abandoned even by the Suicide Slums druglords…

Lex had never truly appreciated exactly how minimal Superman usually kept villainous damage to their city until that day. He’d never had an alternate comparison, really -- Superman was the only meta on the planet who took on problems at that scale, as apparently J’onn was too busy with Martha’s politics to bother with “the hero stuff.” That, or the Martian considered policing human affairs beneath him now, at least outside of actual law enforcement duties.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. What had been truly terrifying about the whole experience was that, after the fact, Kal-El had shown up hovering outside his window. Not Kal, not Superman -- Kal-El, because the Reporter didn’t wear the suit, and it simply had to be Kal-El by default because It wasn’t human. It had paused long enough to get its bearings, then slammed a hand into the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall window and shattered the entire damn thing. Then It had floated in and grabbed Lex by the scruff of the neck and proceeded to tell him exactly what It thought of the operations that had been going on at the three demolished factories, listed exactly how they were connected to LexCorp and what contact Lex had and had not had with them, and then proceeded to rant at Lex like a lunatic. About what he should have been doing instead.

The last part was the terrifying bit, actually; Kal-El had only really gotten mad right at the end. Kal-El had rattled off all the rest like it was somebody else’s grocery list: EPA violations, civil rights violations, local laws broken aplenty, certainly enough to warrant jail time in various countries, several things that could have had him tossed in a cell by the FBI. Not only that, but the _way_ in which Kal-El had talked about them had made it clear that It must have had proof of those acts at some time in one form or another. But, apparently, that was just annoying human stuff that barely registered. No, what was “bad” had apparently been the claim that he was a horrible person who didn’t go out camping enough, and he’d been threatened with a _loss of ice-cream privileges on Earth forever_ if he didn’t clean up his act, as if that was the worst possible thing that could happen to him. Now, if that wasn’t an indication of how bizarrely alien a human mindset operating within an alien biology could get under lack of sleep and near-constant stress…

It didn’t help that even though Kal must’ve known about all of those particular wrongdoings long-since, the Reporter had never written him up in the Daily Planet for any of it. Insult to injury.

He’d had to beg forgiveness of The Alien, and had thanked god thereafter that there had been no natural disasters for the next 24 hours. Kal-El had gone back to Clark and Lois’s apartment and crashed. He’d been back to normal the next day ...or at least as normal as he ever was.

Lex hadn’t even had to do anything to quell local crime in the interim to make sure that The Alien got the requisite highly-necessary time to sleep -- apparently the criminals were a lot smarter than he’d thought ...or had a functioning survival instinct.

So, no, Lex wasn’t looking forward to a repeat experience. At all. And, as there had only been vaguely odd behaviors prior to the practically schizophrenic outburst, Lex had no idea what exactly had set Kal off the first, and hopefully last, time. He hadn’t been fighting any villains at or near the factories; there had been no hostage situations, no weird energy surges, no imminent meltdowns-in-progress to stop. As far as Lex could discern, he’d simply... known about the factories there, and decided he didn’t like it, and that he’d wanted their operations to stop, so he’d simply… gotten rid of them. On a whim. Not really thinking anything of it. Lex’s security guards, armed to the teeth with anti-Kryptonian weaponry and specialized training, who he’d thought up until that point were perfectly effective... had proved to be completely useless. Worse, most of the collateral damage to the surroundings had been, in fact, from the _guards’_ weaponry and not The Alien at all.

Besides the large craters at-site, anyway.

It had taken a lot to cover up what had happened. Lex wasn’t even sure Kal remembered the incident properly. Kal never talked about it, after, and _Lex_ certainly wasn’t about to bring it up. And that had been just _one_ week without sleep. If his calculations and windows, which he’d assumed must have been corrupted with bad data somehow, had instead actually been correct, this was looking like more than two weeks, pushing _three_. Maybe more.

One small thing might be all it took for him to finally go over the edge. In a roomful of people. Including himself.

This really hadn’t been on his agenda tonight, but he was going to have to make time for it.

God help him.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex was walking over to him.

Why was Lex walking over to him?

Was he going to gloat?

He’d better not be getting ready to gloat.

Clark didn’t like it when Lex gloated.

Superman liked it less.

Probably thought he was so great, being President and all.

So what?

Clark was better.

...He’d better _not_ be getting ready to gloat.

Clark would show him.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex saw Kal’s eyes narrow and the president-elect almost turned and fled.

Instead, he kept walking forward, and shooed the young lady with the slightly annoying lisp, who was still trying to talk with the Reporter, away from them both.

He was just standing there, in the usual geeky downtrodden Reporter hunch, but it was… off somehow, and not just by the proto-glare.

“Mr. Kent, may I talk with you?”

Kal’s eyes narrowed further.

“Talk with me.” he echoed without inflection.

“In private?” Lord, let him get them away from the crowd.

“In private.” Flatly. With eyes that narrowed further. Shit.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Oh, that was not a Reporter question. The Reporter would stammer something out and come along with him, trailing behind like a lost kicked puppy and meandering about. Superman wouldn’t ask “why?” – he’d just obstinately say “no” and gently demand that he say what he thought out in public in front of everyone. Kal would... Kal would want to know what was wrong, maybe a little the way Clark used to, maybe a little like he actually cared that something might be wrong, the way he had still sometimes almost seemed to want to, before the Reporter ate him alive.

So, by process of elimination, that left...

Oh no.

_Oh, please let this work._

“Unless you want to talk about your _other_ job in front of everyone, I suggest we go elsewhere where no-one will overhear what should be a _private_ conversation,” Lex leaned in and said as quietly, and as non-threateningly, as he possibly could. Not that he had a lot of experience with that.

It stared at him for a second. Two. Three.

Then It turned on its heel and walked towards the nearest door to the inner corridors, with the White House beyond.

Lex followed. He didn’t dare let out a sigh of even the smallest relief just yet.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark didn’t like this.

Lex was armed to the nines, like usual. Superman wanted to punch him in the head, hard, and--

Clark frowned. That wasn’t right, was it? Superman didn’t punch regular humans in the head. Just metahumans. Sometimes. And not that hard.

Lex _was_ a meteor freak, though.

_...Hmmm, close enough?_

No, wait, no, let’s see what he wants first.

“Aren’t you tired?” Lex started, once they were out of earshot.

Superman scanned for and found no bugs. He glared down at Lex. “I’m fine. It’s only 8 o’clock.” When Lex didn’t respond, he added, “I’m here on bomb duty.”

“Bomb duty,” Lex repeated like a question.

“League business.”

“...I have staff--”

“Not good enough.”

“Not good enough?”

“No.”

“They’ve done well enough so far.” Neutrally, coolly. Lex wasn't offended, and he wasn't arguing back -- not really. He was just... asking, mostly. Offering? Talking? In simple conversation. Which was...

\--This wasn’t Lex. Not… Luthor-Lex. The urge to punch him in the head wavered.

“Out of the last twelve events held here that you’ve attended, all have required an intervention from League personnel at least once. Sometimes twice. White House staff were only helpful on two of those occasions,” Clark supplied just as neutrally, because he could do that too.

“…Oh.”

Oh? _Oh?_ Which Lex _was_ this? --He was _armed_ , an _armed_ Lex -- he shouldn’t be saying things like ‘ _oh_ ’...

...wait, _was_ there more than one Lex? He had mood swings like a tree had leaves in the summertime, sure, but...

Lex slid his hands in his pockets and... stared at the floor for a while. Which was _really_ abnormal.

...but didn't Lex _used_ to do that? Was this an old-- a young-- a long-ago-and-far-away-in-Smallville Lex? Did those even exist anymore? Young Alexander didn't. Clark hadn't seen _him_ in _forever_...

“What about the events I didn’t attend?” Lex asked him, finally.

“No problems that required League intervention.”

“Any problems at any of those events I attended after I left?”

“…No.” What was Lex getting at?

"All right, then. Let's go." 

Clark blinked at him.

"...Go?" he asked finally, because it felt like maybe someone needed to.

"Yes," Lex said patiently. "Let's go."

"Let's... us? Go?"

He felt like he was having trouble wrapping his head around this. No, he _knew_ he was having trouble wrapping his head around this... and he wasn't really sure why.

...Shouldn't he be punching someone?

"Yes," said Lex.

It took Clark a moment to remember Lex wasn't telepathic, so instead of asking Lex who he was supposed to be punching -- which was always a bad idea, you don't ask your _nemesis_ for directions to the fight -- he instead said:

"Who us?" And then frowned, because that wasn't quite right.

"Who is 'us'?" he tried again, and Lex frowned at him slightly, and he didn't like that.

But then Lex wasn't frowning anymore, and instead he said, with a casual palm-open gesture, "You and I."

"You and I what?"

There was a pause.

"You and I are 'us'," Lex said slowly, calmly, and Clark wasn't sure if he liked that or not. "Let us go..." Lex paused again. "Why don't you and I go -- leave, and go someplace else?"

"Because I have bomb duty," Clark said, and then frowned, because hadn't he said that before? Had someone hit Lex in the head who wasn't him?

...Oh, right -- Clark was supposed to be punching him in the head at some point. Maybe.

He should probably be glaring at Lex then! So he did.

Lex blinked at him, then said mildly, "But if I leave, then there won't be a problem at the event because I have left. And therefore you won't have to be on bomb duty anymore because there will be no bombs, so you can leave, because there will be no need for League intervention, because, as you have pointed out, there are never any problems at events after I leave."

Clark frowned slightly as he thought that one through. It seemed reasonable enough...

"So let's you and I leave together, now," Lex said.

...but Lex was always reasonable right before he started being unreasonable.

"You're up to something," Clark told him, just in case Lex didn't know he was. Because he was. And it was suspicious. He wanted something.

"No, I'm not," he heard come out of Lex's mouth, off of Lex's lips and tongue, and then he heard, "I am leaving, and you are coming with me."

... _'coming with'_? That was different. Leaving separately was different than... together... because Lex didn't -- _never_ \-- wanted him around anymore. Not unless...

Dark thoughts.

Clark felt something snap inside his head.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex watched as Clark's eyes narrowed suddenly, and... _changed_ \-- and he realized in a moment of perfect clarity that he'd pushed just a _little_ too hard.

"No," said Clark.

And, abruptly, Lex found himself having instinctively retreated in a real damn hurry, to having his back firmly planted against the wall, boxed in by The Alien's arms. He flinched as palms slapped into the wall on either side of his head with an audible slam, just before It leaned in close.

“Got any _more_ orders you’d like to give me, Segeth?” Kal-El hissed down at him, with a thin, thin smile. A very nasty smile.

Its eyes weren’t much better.

Lex swallowed.

And, because he needed to know, as apparently he wasn't in his best form tonight, either -- imagine that -- Lex asked, “Who am I talking to, exactly?” and, shit, it just slipped off of his tongue. He stared up at Kal-El and tried not to look as jittery as he felt as he waited for Kal-El's response.

It tilted its head slightly, looked vaguely… vague. “Me.”

Lex started laughing hysterically.

It blinked down at him, snake-like, and just... _waited_ , like it had all the time in the world.

Lex abruptly stopped all-at-once with a shiver, took in a shallow breath, bit the inside of his cheek, and tried to keep from losing it completely. When he was finally able to speak, he tried again: “Ok, but... Kal? Or the Reporter? Or Superman, or... or...”

It frowned down at him. “Me.” It repeated.

_...What?_

“Me. I’m me. Superman is... is...” It stopped. He? Stopped and shook its-his head slightly, frowned worse. Looked off to the side. “Superman is... a name. For... something I do. The things I do. Sometimes. Lois...” He stopped again.

“Lois decided. Lois...” He swayed loosely for a moment, then dropped forward a little lower to his elbows, closer in. “Lois... doesn’t want me, I think," he told Lex in a low, conspiratorial tone, and Lex hadn't really needed to hear that. "Seven years, and we’re still not married. Can’t even go to a courthouse and just... do it. She doesn’t want to do that. Has to be something big. A big deal. Long time. Something... interruptible. Always.”

...And Lex still hadn't had his question answered. Not really. (This was insane. _He_ was insane.)

Lex licked his lips with a mouth suddenly dry and said, “But... what about...”

“The Reporter? Lois decided that, too," he said, head nodding away. "Lois Lois Lois.” He grimaced. “Always Lois.” His head dropped a bit.

“But _Kal_... Kal is...” He looked up and got a grin. A grin that Lex remembered in nightmares sometimes. A grin from the wedding party. Gun in the barn. Rules he didn’t know. How appropriate.

He looked down again, grin still intact, if not a little wider. “Kal is _mine_. Kal is Red. Red K. I could really use that right now, you know?” he sighed, a little wistfully, a little in reminiscence. “Kal is me, _underneath_. Nobody messes with me when I’m Kal. _Not even you_ ,” he breathed out.

They were nose-to-nose now, and Lex could see how the pupils of his eyes were a little blown-out, like a drug addict jonesing for a fix. Lex tried desperately not to shudder but did anyway.

“Kal wins at life," he said, blinking slowly, with a beautific, utterly _horrifying_ smile.

“Kal needs to stop freaking Lex out because he’s too tired to deal with this shit,” Lex said bluntly.

And he saw Kal’s eyes narrow.

And he suddenly realized he’d said that _out loud_.

So, understandably, Lex panicked a little bit.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"K-Kal-El--" Lex stammered out, looking nervous, and why was he nervous?

"I don't like that name," Clark told him flatly, and, hm, maybe he had reason to be nervous. Maybe he _was_ psychic and knew Clark was thinking about punching him in the head. 

...Wait, did Lex even care about stuff like that? Luthor-Lex-es didn't panic about that sort of thing, did they?

"You-- you don't--" Lex-Luthor-Lex stammered up at him, and that was weird.

" _...Clark?_ " breathed out, with eyes wide open and shocky, wasn't so much.

Well, it wasn't usual anyway. He'd only seen that look on Lex-Lex-Lex once before.

Clark blinked at him. Huh. The look wasn't going away.

...It looked like he was having trouble breathing this time, too.

So Clark helped.

It was a Superman thing to do.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex was shaking slightly -- probably from hysteria -- by the time he came up for air.

More air.

That... that hadn't been a kiss. Exactly.

Yes. And he was going to keep telling himself that.

And -- aha -- hem, now Kal-El-- Kal-- _Clark_ was slumped half over him and they were both slowly collapsing a bit down the side of the wall. More than a bit. Er...

One of these days Lex was going to figure out how in the hell he floated around like that when he was **so damn heavy**. And unshovable.

...aaaand now Lex was sitting on the floor with a big fucking heavy unconscious Kryptonian draped all over him. Great.

This was _not_ how he had been planning on spending his first night in the White House.

...

Oh, well.

Lex patted his poor sleep-deprived nemesis on the head and supposed in zen-like fashion that it could have been worse.

~*~*~*~*~*~

...And then it was.

\--Later the next morning, anyway, when Lex spit half a mouthful of coffee out onto his morning paper in front a room full of his chiefs of staff upon viewing a picture of the two of them plastered across the front page of a very prominent news source.

Fucking photoshop. He had _not_ had _that_ , or _any_ sort of mild, slightly exasperated, or the least bit affectionate look on his face at _any_ point in that hallway last night, goddamnit, so help him god!

...Didn't really help that the man that was supposedly the recipient of the aforementioned _allegedly_ -not-a-death-glare gaze was still in the House at the moment, sleeping it off. Or something.

He slammed down his half-empty coffee mug and glared at his staff, who were all blinking him with confusion and blank lack of censure at his maybe-odd-to-them behavior.

...Well, they could keep it up a while longer, too, Lex decided as he stood up abruptly and straightened his tie _with intent_.

He turned and stomped out of the Oval Office, and left the lot of them in the dust.

'Hah, let's see how _he_ likes being barged in on, all confused at anger and rage!' Lex thought with a malice-laden glee.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Uh, sir?" an aide who was sitting by the door started as gave his Commander in Chief a double-take before scrambling upright, but Lex ignored the man and kicked in the doors.

Then he cursed a good bit under his breath at the thoroughly not-kicked-in doors, hopping on one foot -- he'd forgotten that the entire damn place was armored walls and really a less-than-quaint modern kind of fortress -- walked it off in circles until he wasn't limping anymore, then came back, unlocked the doors--

"Sir?"

\--and shoved them open with a bang!

...And then proceeded to put his hands on his hips and _glare_ down at the dressed-like-the-Reporter Clark Kent draped across a rather large-enough bed.

Who wasn't moving _at all_.

Lex put his massive intellect to good use and deduced that that was probably...

"...Sir?" he heard tentatively at his elbow. "Um, I was supposed to stay here, and remind you that waking him was a bad idea?"

...because Clark was three-weeks of sleep-deprived and needed the rest badly.

Oops.

Lex pinched the bridge of his nose, grumbled a little to himself, and escorted himself out of the room.

"Sir?"

Without looking back, Lex made a vague gesture which supplied the aide with his orders -- exit and lock up the room behind him -- as he walked away, headed back to the Oval Office and this day's work.

Damn Clark and his damn damnable damning damn...

~*~*~*~*~*~


End file.
